News about: Trucks - Truckmakers - Truckers and the Trucking Industry
Labels: corruptions, truckmakers' news worldwide
posted by Unknown @ 11:43 AM
0 comments
Washington,DC,USA -Transport Intelligence (UK), by Thomas Cullen -10 May 2010: -- The American Department of Justice has entered a case against Panalpina, EGL (now part of CEVA) and the defence contractor Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) alleging corruption in forwarding contracts for logistics serving US forces in Iraq... According the US Department of Justice the allegations are related to earlier cases against EGL concerning "non-existent charges for war risk insurance in invoices to KBR for air shipments to Iraq". These resulted in EGL being fined $4m and two EGL managers being convicted of criminal charges. The Department of Justice also asserts that EGL was fined over $1m over issues of over charging for container demurrage and bribing KBR employees in Kuwait... In such cases any defendant found guilty is liable not only to fines but is required to compensate the government for any losses it may have incurred from the illegal activity. This often amounts to larger sums than the fines themselves... Although EGL appears to have limited the damage of the earlier convictions, Panalpina has suffered badly from previous cases of alleged corruption. Most recently its Nigerian business was shut down as a result of a case again launched from the US, therefore these latest allegations must be particularly uncomfortable... (Photo: Panalpina flag)Labels: corruptions
posted by Unknown @ 5:23 AM
0 comments
Cheyenne,WY,USA -Land Line Magazine, by Charlie Morasch -April 14, 2010: -- A Wal-Mart truck driver kidnapped and accosted by a state trooper in Wyoming who considered killing the driver has sued the trooper and several other state officials... In November, former trooper Franklin Ryle Jr. was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the kidnapping plot, which included plans to kill the driver before staging a crash and collecting settlement money from Wal-Mart... On Jan. 8, 2009, Ryle pulled Colorado trucker Richard Smidt over on Interstate 25 outside of Douglas, WY. Ryle took Smidt into custody but didn’t take him to jail, and he later admitted that he considered killing the truck driver... The FBI and the Wyoming Highway Patrol began investigating Ryle after his wife told her brother, a police officer, about her husband’s plan to kill Smidt... The investigation into Ryle also revealed that two troopers involved in the Wal-Mart truck scandal told Wyoming Highway Patrol supervisors they had been involved in smuggling steroids into the U.S. from Mexico and had used steroids while they worked as state troopers...
Labels: corruptions
posted by Unknown @ 11:32 AM
0 comments
Moscow,Russia -The Georgian Daily, by Paul Goble -March 9, 2010: -- Russia ranks 118th out of 133 countries, right alongside Mozambique and Burundi, in terms of the quality of its highways, according to the latest report of the World Economic Forum, a ranking that is the result, Russian investigators say, of the outmoded construction practices and massive corruption such practices invite... But what is still worse, according to a set of articles in the current issue of Moscow’s “New Times,” the poor quality of Russian highways is not only limiting economic growth by slowing the movement of freight and increasing its cost but also resulting in the second highest rate of highway fatalities in the world... And as if to add insult to all these injuries, the weekly magazine cites experts who say the actual size of Russia’s highway system has declined over the past 15 years, despite the government’s use of statistical manipulation to allow the powers that be to claim that there has been a slight increase instead... That too entails enormous costs to the Russian economy, and it could relatively easily be changed if Russian road builders were to adopt the standard practice, increasingly used even in China, of putting iron and steel plinths in the concrete to give them greater stability and longer life, something Russian concerns do not yet do... That would not only save money but it would save lives. According to the World Health Organization, “New Times” says, “Russia occupies the second place in the world [in highway deaths] – 25.2 per 100,000 people,” second only to Kazakhstan with 30.6 deaths per 100,000 residents... Given all the advantages of building more and better roads, the news weekly asks, why do Russian enterprises not do it? And it says that “the answer which experts gives unanimously is corruption,” a plague which “boosts the price of the construction of roads tens of times” and one bureaucrats don’t fight because they can earn more by not doing so... (Photo from englishrussia: highway holes)Labels: corruptions
posted by Unknown @ 4:38 PM
0 comments
The fund lacked transparency and was riddled with audit problems
Sydney,NSW,Australia -The Age, by LINTON BESSER -October 12, 2009: -- Trucking firms are still pouring money into a secretive Transport Workers Union slush fund almost two years after investigations found the fund lacked transparency and was riddled with audit problems... The union and its then NSW state secretary, Tony Sheldon, were engulfed in controversy when the so-called training fund was first exposed... Union members had been unaware their employers — including Linfox, Dairy Farmers and Toll — had been secretly making payments to the union while it was also negotiating wage agreements. But since then little has changed... In February 2008, Mr Sheldon released a review of the fund by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, which found the fund's managing "council" did not exist and that there was no documentation "that addresses financial management processes".... Last year, the union mailed a summary of the fund's 2007 accounts to members... But this year's version of the same document provided no details on the fund. In the five years to 2005 up to $2 million was given to the fund... In March, state secretary for NSW, Wayne Forno, had announced the fund would be managed from July by a new company, the Transport, Education, Audit, Compliance and Health Organisation, said employer contributions would eventually be transferred to the new company... (Image from TWU)Labels: corruptions
posted by Unknown @ 10:13 AM
0 comments
Ljubljana,Slovenia -STA -20 October 2008: -- Slovenian hauliers have complained about obstacles they face in travelling through Hungary, including growing corruption among officials. They threatened to close off roads to Hungarian lorry drivers if the matter is not resolved... (STA: The rest of this news item is available to subscribers)
Labels: corruptions
posted by Unknown @ 7:48 AM
0 comments
Afghanistan -What Really Happened (USA), by Michael Rivero -May 10, 2007: -- When the Taliban first rose to power in the mid-1990s, it was in part a response to the rampant lawlessness on Afghanistan's roads, which had been dominated by the illegal checkpoints of warlords. Travelling anywhere was a gamble, and leading figures in the transport industry supported Mullah Mohammed Omar's fundamentalists because they longed for security. According to today's truck drivers, history is in danger of repeating itself... One can see, from this article, just how magnificently well the NATO "occupation" of Afghanistan is going in terms of ridding the country of crippling corruption...
Labels: corruptions
posted by Unknown @ 4:16 PM
0 comments
Hubli,India -The Times of India (New Delhi,India), by MANU AIYAPPA -2 Apr, 2007: -- A traffic inspector caught on camera accepting money from a truck operator transporting manganese ore here has exposed the unholy nexus between police and truck operators... Police inspector Shivashankar Gadad was suspended after he was caught red-handed while accepting Rs 1,000 from journalists of a private news channel who posed as truck operators... While this was probably the first "sting operation" of its kind reported in the region, the issue has brought to light the infamous "monthly culture" in the police department... "The monthly is collected and delivered by a representative of the union at a designated spot. This reduces the risk of a policeman on duty getting caught," a traffic policeman said. The racket is more common in commercial areas, the starting point for a large number of trucks and light commercial vehicles. A year ago, the range IGP Doreswamy Naik had led a team and seized such tokens. When contacted, senior police officers refused to comment on the issue, while the police commissioner was unavailable...
Labels: corruptions
posted by Unknown @ 8:18 PM
0 comments
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
